I've long had a deep respect for Robert F. Kennedy for his dedicated work as an environmental advocate. Tom and I enjoyed interviewing him and were moved by his passion and dedication to our country and our Democracy. We spoke to him via phone at his office at Pace University's Environmental Litigation Clinic in White Plains, New York, which he founded, about the election of 2004. This was an experience to remember...

BRAD BLOG: In your book, "Crimes Against Nature," you said that Bush won the 2004 election because of an information deficit caused by a breakdown in our national media. You go on to say that "Bush was re-elected because of the negligence of-and deliberate deception by-the American press." Your recent article in "Rolling Stone" seems to suggest that your opinion has changed, focusing more on the fraud and deception in Ohio with the computerized voting machines. What was the most important thing that made you suspect fraud and decide to investigate the 2004 election?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: Well, my opinion hasn't changed, that the press has been negligent, and that the large amount of support for the President, and for the people that did vote for the President, that large numbers of them would not have done so, had they known the truth about his policies, and his record. You say my opinion changed, but it hasn't changed.

You know I've known this for many years, because of my anecdotal experience. I give about 40 speeches a year, in red states to Republican audiences, and I get the same enthusiastic responses from those audiences as I get from Liberal college audiences. The only difference is, is that the Republicans often say to me, "How come we've never heard this before?" I made the conclusion many years ago that there's not a huge values difference between Red State Republicans and Blue State Democrats. The distinction is really informational. 80% of Republicans are just Democrats who don't know what's going on. And my anecdotal conclusion was confirmed by a survey done immediately after the 2004 election called the PIPA report, which tested Bush supporters and Kerry supporters based upon their knowledge of current events. It found that among Bush supporters, they were widespread in its interpretations, or there were factual errors in the way that they viewed Bush's major public policy initiatives.

For example, 75% of the Republican respondents believed that Saddam Hussein bombed the World Trade Center, and 72% believed that WMD had been found in Iraq. And most of them believed that the war in Iraq had strong support among Iraq's Muslim neighbors and our traditional allies in Europe, which of course is wrong. The Democrats as a whole had a much more accurate view of those events. And then PIPA went back twice to these same people. The first time it went back to the people that had these misinterpretations, and asked them where they were getting their news, and invariably they said talk radio and FOX news. And PIPA went back a third time, and made inquiries about their fundamental values, and it did start with a string of hypotheticals:

"What if there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? What if Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with bombing the World Trade Center? What if the U.S. Invasion of Iraq had little support among Iraq's Muslim neighbors and was largely opposed by Iraq's Muslim neighbors, and by our troops and allies in Europe? Should we have still gone in?" And roughly 80% of Dem and 80% of Rep said the same thing, "We should not." And so the values were the same. It was the facts, the information, it was the access to information that was different.

BB: Are you then adding a layer of suspicion about the direct manipulation and fraudulent counting through computerized voting?

RFK JR.: That also happened, that was another factor. Our democracy is broken. Our democracy is broken because of our campaign finance system, which is just a system of legalized bribery, which has allowed corporations and the very wealthy to control the electoral results. Let me go back and say our electoral system is broken for three reasons, in three large respects: The first is our campaign finance system, which is a system of legalized bribery, and which has allowed corporations and the very rich to control the results of our electoral process. Number two is the failure of the American press and that is also a function and result of corporate control, as I showed in my book. Number three is the election system itself, which is broken. We've privatized it and allowed four large corporations to count our votes on machines that don't work.

But also the Republican party has inculcated a culture of corruption. The Republican party has adopted a strategy of denying votes to blacks and other minorities, and to other people more traditionally Democratic, suppressing Democratic vote and fraudulently expanding Republican vote. And this is happening all over the country. I would urge you to read Greg Palast's latest book, Armed Madhouse. He does for the national elections what I did for the Ohio election, which is to synthesize the information that's out there into a readable document, in which he shows exactly how this election was stolen-not just in Ohio but in many other states as well.

BB: Have any of your expert witnesses or anyone referred to some of the stringent requirements in the gaming industry which uses computerized slot machines, poker machines and so forth involving the levels of certification and disclosure of the security requirements of its vendors?

RFK JR.: Well, you see this was just another corporate boondoggle that gave the most venal mendacious corporations charge of our most sacred public trust, which is the right to vote. These corporations were making hundreds of millions of dollars. The machines, as it turns out, were manufactured by wireless companies and were just a cheap piece of junk that cost less than $100 to manufacture, and they were selling them for $2400 apiece. And they were using Jack Abramoff and other corrupt lobbyists to persuade federal officials to pass the federal act to appropriate the money and then to persuade state and local officials to purchase the defective machines.

BB: Jack Abramoff was involved in this?

RFK JR.: Oh yes. Jack Abramoff, and Bob Ney (R-Oh), the principle figure in the Abramoff scandal and he's the author of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). And Diebold contributed millions of dollars to these guys, including hundreds of thousands of dollars to Abramoff to lobby on behalf of HAVA, and to lobby states like New York and the other states, to adopt the Diebold machines.

BB: So HAVA was "created specifically to disenfranchise voters and verfication"?

RFK JR.: HAVA was written specifically to require the states to buy Diebold machines. I mean one company basically had control of the whole legislative process. That's why HAVA has a provision in it that discourages vote verification by paper ballots. Both Republicans and Democrats tried to reform the HAVA, saying of course we should have paper verification of the vote. Paper verification would allow you to go in, make your vote on the electronic machine, and you get a receipt that is a copy of who you voted for and you are allowed to examine that receipt. You deposit it in a locked box in the voting area. That way, if there's ever any question, if you need to count, you can count the papers, and see if it compares to what the machine says.

But Bob Ney fought tooth and nail against that provision because Diebold made a machine that does not provide a paper ballot. And he went so far, because Diebold contributed a million dollars to an organization that purportedly protects the rights of blind people. And in exchange for that, that organization got one of its officers to testify on Capitol Hill at the HAVA hearings, that blind people in America did not want paper ballots - voter verified ballots - because it would deprive someone of the right to vote secretly. Now the other organizations that support handicapped rights and rights of the blind, do not take that position. This was a position that that organization adopted after accepting a million dollars from Diebold. The whole operation was corrupt and now Bob Ney is going to jail for it.

BB: Also, speaking of those guys, election officials in several states, most notably Ken Blackwell in Ohio and Bruce McPherson here in the state of California, appear to be be deliberately flouting established law and procedures as well as direct court orders, and they seem to be just "getting away with it". How can that be?

RFK JR.: Well, again, it's because of the failure of the American press. This is the most important issue in American Democracy and the press isn't covering it. So the politicians who want to fix the elections, and who want these fraudulent machines, can get away with it, don't take a position because it gets no traction in the press.

BB:: But then why didn't people like Kerry want to contest the results?

RFK JR.: You'd have to ask Kerry.

BB: Why hasn't the DNC done anything about this?

RFK JR.: You'd have to ask the DNC.

BB: We watched Howard Dean on television having a hack demonstrated to him by Bev Harris, and he doesn't seem to say anything... I guess we'll have to ask them! But there seems to have been a pattern here in the leadership of the Democratic Party....What I was getting to in those questions was not for you to interpret the actions of the those in the DNC and so forth, but there seems to be a pattern in the leadership of the Dem Party that shies away from direct conflict in this....

RFK JR.: The Democratic leadership on this issue has been abysmal. And particularly since this is a civil rights issue and it's a racial issue. The machines themselves are kind of a distraction because the machines are recent innovations. The Republican Party, the Republican National Committee, has been using, old-fashioned, Jim Crow, apartheid-type maneuvers to steal the last two national elections.

BB: Like in Georgia, who were trying to establish the Poll Tax again...

RFK JR.: And this has been happening all over the country. If you look at who's being denied the right to vote, on absentee ballots, on provisional ballots, it's Hispanics, it's Blacks and it's Native Americans, and the Democratic Party ought to be touting this as the biggest civil rights issue of our time. But they are ignoring it, and that really is shocking. It's shocking that the Republicans are not up in arms about this too, because this should not be a partisan issue. This is a fundamental basis of our American value system, which is representative Democracy. For a party that claims to speak for "American Values" to ignore the fact that other members of the party, that the leadership of the party is involved in an active national campaign to stop black people from voting, and to steal elections, shows the moral bankruptcy of everybody in that party!

Why aren't Republicans standing up and speaking on this issue? Why isn't Republican leadership standing up and speaking on this issue?

BB: California [state recently re-certified] Diebold machines, all over the state. If California "goes" Republican, do you think we will be able to say, ok, there's no doubt anymore?

RFK JR.: Listen: all I can say is that the Diebold machines are among the worst. They break down, they are easily hacked, Diebold uses fraudulent misrepresentations to sell the machines, and they should not be part of our voting system.

BB: Are there any plans on a national or state level to contest suspicious results this time around?

RFK JR.: They make it very difficult to contest crooked elections. Nebraska is one of several states that have now passed laws, and I believe Florida is one of those states, that prohibit counting paper ballots in votes that were originally counted by machines. The only way that you can count votes is the original way in which they were counted. And so, of course, that makes it easy to fix any election and make sure that nobody has the right to challenge it.

Many other states, including Ohio, have made it impossible for anybody to challenge an election, even if it was obviously fixed. And these kinds of initiatives are happening all over the country. Why would any state legislature vote for such a rule unless they were Republicans who felt that elections would be fixed in their favor? Why would any American vote for such a rule? It is completely anti-American and un-American. We should be encouraging Americans to vote and encouraging EVERY American to cast a vote and to make sure that every vote is counted. And both parties should be working toward that.

But instead you have a Republican party that is trying to suppress votes and trying to defraud the public. And you have a Democratic party that is like the deer in headlights. And the Democrats are never going to win another election if they don't fix this issue because they are starting out every election with a 3 million vote deficit, and those are mainly the black voters in this country and who no longer have their votes counted.

And you know, this may sound shrill, but look at the facts. And I challenge anyone who says that this is shrill and inaccurate to read Greg Palast's book, to read my article, to look at the facts, because the facts are infallible.

BB: Do you think we are going to need a reaction like they are having currently in Mexico?

RFK JR.: Well, I wish the Democratic Party had the cojones that the Mexican opposition party has! They're saying "We're not gonna stand for our elections being stolen anymore!" It's great for these (our) political leaders to stand up and say "I will gracefully concede" but what does that mean for the rest of us? We are getting stuck with these governments that are absolutely running our country into the ground.

BB: You said in your recent interview with Charlie Rose, that this is the worst Presidency we've ever had, and they've ruined our reputation in the world. So if you had your ideal President, what kind of things would he or she need to do to restore our credibility?

RFK JR.: Well the first thing we need to do is to restore American Democracy.

Number One: Fix the campaign finance system to get corporate money out of the electoral process. Corporations are a great thing for our country. They drive our economy but they should NOT be running our government because they don't want the same thing for America that Americans want. Corporations don't want democracy, they want free markets, they want profits, and oftentimes the easiest path to profits is to use the campaign finance system to get their hooks into a public official and to use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them monopoly control and a competitive edge and to privatize the commons-to steal our air, our water, or our public treasury, and liquidate it for private profits.

Number Two: We have to fix the press: restore journalistic ethics in this country, and that is by bringing back the fairness doctrine and strengthening the FCC. The Fairness Doctrine was abolished by Ronald Reagan in 1988, and it recognized that the airwaves belong to the public; that the broadcasters can be licensed to use them to make a profit, but they use them with the proviso that their primary obligation is to advance democracy and promote the public interest. They have to inform the public because a democracy cannot survive an uninformed public. As Thomas Jefferson said, "An uninformed public will trade a hundred years of hard-fought civil rights for a half an hour of welfare." And they will follow the first demagogue or religious fanatic that comes along and offers them a $300 tax break.

Number Three: We have to fix our electoral system so that every vote is counted. Those are the first three things that any President should do, Republican or Democrat, to restore American Democracy.

BB: Now all these state laws that are being put in place could be trumped by Congress...

RFK JR.: Of course, we should have a federal law that creates federal standards for elections. All federal elections have to be verified by paper ballots. Election officials, whose job is to ensure the integrity of federal elections, cannot simultaneously serve as campaign managers or candidates who are participating in that contest. Many states already have that rule, but Florida and Ohio do not. It's a formula for corruption!

BB: In summary, how optimistic or pessimistic are you about our ability to get our country back?

RFK JR.: Well, you know, my attitude is that I don't try to predict the future, I can only say that those of us who care about this country have to keep fighting, and whether you think you're gonna win or lose, you gotta just keep slugging and you gotta be ready to die with your boots on, because that's what our forefathers did, they started a revolution, and they put their fortunes and their lives at stake. And we need to summon the same kind of courage from our generation, and demand that kind of courage from our leadership.

BB: And we have to get that message out to the Democratic leadership as well.

For a party that claims to speak for "American Values" to ignore the fact that other members of the party, that the leadership of the party is involved in an active national campaign to stop black people from voting, and to steal elections, shows the moral bankruptcy of everybody in that party!

Guess which party he was talking about?

Shouldn't that party be addressed first, by asking "why is the leadership of your party engaged in a national effort to steal elections"?

We seem to be hearing more and more credible individuals talking about these critical issues these days. I can't see myself voting Democratic any longer. That is, until they address these issues head on and start representing my interests.

We need to get rid of these corrupt voting systems and find some real candidates that will fight this battle and bring them to the attention of the American public.

I deeply admire Mr. Kennedy, and of course Brad for continuously speaking out against all the corruption.

Thank you Brad. Thank you Mr. Kennedy. For your courage, truth , tenacity and love for our country. Big oil has got to be put it it's place. It's running our govt....picking and choosing our leaders. When I heard that Al Gore had been studying environmental issues from an early age..I knew Big Oil couldn't let him win. The media demonized him and puffed up Bush prior to the 2000 election. And then kept the fraud quiet. The democratic party is bought off. Pro war dems. haven't been mislead, they are supporting Israel as a military base in the mideast. Most of the progressive blogs fail to notice the importance of election fraud, the impact of AIPAC on our lawmakers, and you will be discouraged from commenting if you want to add these topics to discussion. Joe Lieberman took Choicepoint money? We can't change our govt. until we use the right names for the problem. The problem is a dem. party that is about as bought off as repubs....Fascism and genocide. The Katrina debacle was genocide. We shouldn't have to worry that great statesmen like Mr. Kennedy will be shot by a lone gunmen or have a small plane crash. This will only happen when the criminals in our govt. are punished just like a private citizen. The likes of Alen Spectre should be in jail. "Magic bullet theory." In the death of our beloved JFK

Thank you, Brad et al! And Bobby, you and I crossed paths a few times over 30 years ago, and I was struck then by your acuity and kindness. Seems you've aged well, no, gracefully, no, magnificently! We love you, brother. Thanks for being on our side! We are facing a battle of monumental proportions - the current administration is stealing billions of dollars each time we blink. Let's not be naive, these cretins would go to any lengths, they would even slaughter people by the thousands, for those ill-gotten gains. It goes without saying that we can't let them get away with stealing any more votes, which they'll surely try to do yet again. We've got to be lots smarter than they are, I suppose. We're definitely a lot nicer, like, more fun to be around ...

What surprised me about this is that Bobby would so readily agree to doing an interview with me, when he didn't know me from Eve or when he knew I was essentially going to be putting this on the blogs. He was completely gracious and spent a lot of time with my husband and I.
He, and Mike though (and I will be putting an interview up with him later this week, or the first part of next week), believe in citizen media.

Talk about a true American Patriot. I wish I could show in the interview the kind of passion Bobby has for this, but if you want to hear him for yourselves, you can visit his archives at the Ring of Fire website. I think the weekend before last he actually was interviewing Brad.

oh, and you're welcome. It was really my pleasure and boy was I nervous when I called him.

And thanks Brad for letting me put it here, with the prominence I think it deserves. I'll be cross-posting it later to other blogs, but considering the subject matter I thought it deserved to be here first and exclusively for a few days, considering all the fine work Brad has done on this issue.

re #10 #11 and so on ... the confusion about who did the interview is actually my fault. It was I who posted the piece (Brad's away, remember?), but Joy had sent it to Brad, and he had done the initial layout work on it, so it had his name on it as the author. I should have jumped through all the hoops required to make it say "blogged by Joy and Tom" where it now says "blogged by Brad" ... but I didn't. So slap my wrist and slap Joy and Tom on the back and you can buy them both a drink if you like and you can even put it on my tab.

RFKjr, "They make it very difficult to contest crooked elections. Nebraska is one of several states that have now passed laws"

Nebraska eh ?, the IFES controlled the machine sales to the SOS, and the SoS of Nebraska is a contributor to the IFES
Then they enacted laws like Florida where it is illegal to recount other than by machine ? hmmm

Czarragorn,
I chose that name because Bush said that reading was for "Fancy Pants Elitists". It's purely tongue in cheek (ouch).

And to whomever said they weren't going to vote Democratic this year because of the complicity that the Dem's have been demonstrating, I have to say I think that's a mistake, as much as I really UNDERSTAND why someone would feel that way. We need to make it unmistakeably clear this year by huge numbers of turn out that the Dems are winning, it's the only way we will be able to take back the House so we can get subpeona power. It's the only way we will be able to overwhelm any attempt to steal the elections. Republicans don't turn out in large numbers. Large numbers would be unmistakeably Democrats.

For those who want to follow up a bit on what Floridiot and I have to support what RFK said:

For a party that claims to speak for "American Values" to ignore the fact that other members of the party, that the leadership of the party is involved in an active national campaign to stop black people from voting, and to steal elections, shows the moral bankruptcy of everybody in that party!

(bold added).

We show that one republican individual has certified every EVM and tie the individual to a software company with ties to the DoD.

Dredd,
I can't speak for Molly, but I think we can at the very least say that the Dems have NOT been doing anything about the fraud, so they have been complicit. Kerry/Edwards, and Gore/Lieberman have been mainly silent on the vote fraud, though Gore, to his credit, took it to the Fl. Supreme Court when all that shenanigans was going on. And look at Busby, she wouldn't contest the election and the counts of the votes weren't even done when she conceded... 65,000 votes were still out, and Billbray only supposedly led by 4500 votes. This may not be being "bought off" but it has shown a very wrong headed reluctance to make sure that the PEOPLE are represented and that they get who they really elected. And it has shown that the leadership... like the DNC, or the DCCC have been remarkably complicit in allowing the Republicans to steal our Democracy.

This is one reason I felt the need to do this interview . We finally have a prominent person come forward and do a thorough investigation and risk his own reputation to question this vote and who has filed a lawsuit against these companies. That takes courage. And I'm really worried that our Democracy may vanish in front of our eyes, and as Brad says our Democracy can't save itself. It's up to us.

Randi Rhodes has frequently said that the biggest threat to our country is from within. And I'm afraid she's right.

So, are you saying RFK is a republican? Dean is a republican? Conyers is a republican?

The person you interviewed said:

For a party that claims to speak for "American Values" to ignore the fact that other members of the party, that the leadership of the party is involved in an active national campaign to stop black people from voting, and to steal elections, shows the moral bankruptcy of everybody in that party!

(bold added). The republican dictatorship has full control of every committee in congress and the majority vote on those committees (where the power is), and are, according to the person you interviewed, involved in an active campaign to steal elections in the United States.

I just was at cannonfire's blog and he has it posted that the primary election in Georgia is being stolen from Cynthia Mc Kinney. Same old same old, peolpe are voting for Cynthia and before their eyes the votes are switching to her opponent.

We can give the Democrats (other than Busby, she's already proven herself unworthy) one more chance to be spineless and/or ignorant by voting for Democrats in MASSIVE numbers this November 7th (Republican supporters, don't forget, you vote on November 8th).

IF they steal it again (for the 4th time) and the Democrats sit on their hands or "keep their powder dry" (GOD how I hate that phrase) then we will know what we are dealing with and we can cast them off with the Republicans as being THE ENEMY.

What have we got to lose --- it's not like we have any other options right now.

And, I will give GORE (not Liberman, he tried to lose it for us three ways in 2000, beginning with not giving up his Senate seat to run, and risking the Senate majority if Gore/Liberman DID take office) more credit than Kerry. He took it as far as he could without taking it to the streets. As he said recently, "there is a very fine line between a Supreme Court decision and revolution." HE wasn't willing to cross that line, and then he decided to stop the House challenge because he didn't believe he had the votes to win it, so he made a deal instead. A choice that is open to discussion, but was a far cry more fight than Kerry showed.

Anyway, let's BE AHEAD BY SO MUCH THIS FALL THAT THEY __HAVE__ TO STEAL IT TO WIN! (Greg Palast). It's all we can do, other than outright rebellion, which we can save for November 8, 2006.

Evil top level of each government+media, are deciding who is going to get what. nukes trump local electronic election fraud / precint voting issues. (Back to MEDIA BLACKOUT) fires in california are diversion. All channels are in sync. All democracy, or constitutional republic, or law is mayan. Locally ch 3,6,10,13,19,31,40,58 (rabbit ears) Surveilence, paranoia, and blackouts are malware of web. government+4th estate is awol.

thanks for the interview. What we need is to come together IN SPITE of our differences to force state legislatures to test the machines prior to the election. They must test every machine! In every precinct! Prove the machines are counting correctly, up to the number of registered voters in the precinct!
Second: EVERY VOTER must physically go to or contact their local voting registrar and verify they are registered to vote in their precinct and get information as to where the voting machines are located in their precinct. We have to be pro-active! Its your duty!

For Dredd: If I may act as a mediator in this ongoing brouhaha about "Who's to blame?", let me do so, please.

REPUBLICANS stole the last two presidential elections. Brad doesn't use that word, but I will. It may well be that DEMOCRATS also engaged in fraud, but REPUBLICANS did more of it, and did it better. The people voted for Gore and Kerry, but that didn't matter. There's strong evidence that one or more members of Congress were also elected fraudulently in 2002...REPUBLICANS.

If we assume that Republicans willfully engaged in election fraud in 2000, 2002, and 2004, and got away with it, shouldn't we assume they'll do it again in 2006 and 2008? May we operate from the predicate that Republicans are willful thieves?

If so, blaming them for election fraud is like blaming a leopard for having spots. Yes, they're bad guys. Yes, they did it. But if someone steals our car, and we report it to the police, and the police do nothing...then we blame the police for not doing their job, don't we? We don't say, "The cops didn't steal the car, it's the thief's fault!"

Democrats should have been the cops in 2000, 2002, and 2004. With a handful of exceptions, they've treated election fraud as a non-issue. They've conceded close elections where patterns suggested a repeat of earlier frauds (which they had also ignored).

One possible reason for their timidity is that they have skeletons in their own closets where fraud is concerned and have made Faustian bargains with Republicans; a likelier reason is that individually, they want to retain viability, and to do so means avoiding the "sore loser" tag. Whatever the reason, I hold them accountable for not policing Republicans.

It comes down to this: there are great and massive forces at work on this planet that make our little "government" look like what it is --- a small cog in a very big machine. And, to a great extent, those forces use THE MEDIA to control populations, create the "frame of discussion" (i.e. what we talk about and what we don't, for lack of time or facts or the sense that it is "important"), and assure their ultimate control of our lives.

I think Phil is, unfortunately, probably 75% right.

However, that 25% is what keeps me going. The fact that, as well-structured, massively-financed, and brilliantly managed the forces of evil are, there are forces of good fighting them. There are THINKERS here and elsewhere. There are BELIEVERS communicating with each other (sometimes in the code of "fiction" like V IS FOR VENDETTA). There are constant GAPS in their command and control and communications structure.

I have not yet given up.

Al Franken has not spoken because he wants to run for office and his "advisors" (and damn, the Democrats have a really pathetic brain trust, I must say, from which people like Kerry, Franken, Busby, Pelosi, et al. get their advice) have told him to stay away from Election Fraud and any other "tin foil hat" issues.

Big Eddie has stayed (mostly) away from it because he is after the "mainstream" media market.

Thom Hartman has bravely been all over this, as has Randi Rhodes, as well as stalwarts Mike Malloy and RFK/Papendrais (sic).

There are holes in their armor, Phil. YES, they can control the weather, easily give just about anybody a massive coronary, choose the moment for a (convenient) terrorist event or arrest, and (of course) manipulate what we see and hear.

But, there are HOLES.

"First learn to become invincible, then wait for your enemy's moment of vulnerability." Sun Tzu

By every account, votes for Congresswoman McKinney have "morphed" into votes for Johnson. So far, nobody has heard one anecdotal report of an intended vote for Johnson turning into a vote for McKinney.

the "they" i am referring to are the same group that allowed 9/11 to happen.some of "them" are in plain site(Cheney etc.) some are not.(Silverstien etc.)McKinney was one of the few politicians to ask tough questions about 9/11 among other issues most politicians wont touch(Dyncorp sex ring etc.) "they" havent forgotten about it.and yes, im sure the DoD is involved to some degree in many of these things.

It's great to hear Kennedy declaring the same things we've been thinking.
However, it's very sad to know the best we can do for Democracy is to vote for a political party that doesn't deserve it, has clearly failed us & shares responsibility for the current near fascist state we & the rest of the world live in.
If the Democracts get elected to majority--IF they do I say & it's a very big IF---are they going to reform the election process? Stop the war? Stop media consolidation? Impeach a President gone dictator in order to teach others they won't get away with it?
Have they said they would? Hmmm....is putting them in majority going to change anything at all for the better? Or is their spinelessness going to morph them into neo-cons too once they get access to bigger $ & bigger power?

I wonder what Kennedy thinks of the National Initiative for Democracy?

CHARLENE (#49): The strategy is really quite simple. In fact, it was simple enough that the Republicans used in 1992.

We will do what we can to elect the Democrats into power in 2006 to stop this slow boiling towards Fascism.

They will do exit polling and post-election polling and they will know quite well (though they will probably not share publicly) exactly who got them back into power.

Then, we will put MASSIVE pressure on them to do the right things: reform the electoral system, stop the war, restore a reasonable tax structure, tax the war profits, investigate the high crimes, and (if necessary) ITMFA.

If they don't move fast enough, we will cut ONE Democrat from the herd and destroy them politically to demonstrate that we have the power to do so. The rest will fall into line.

IF that doesn't work, we will run an alternative candidate in 2008 and deal with the consequences. But, we will find a candidate that can bring 40 million NEW voters into the process and we will swamp both of the corporate-controlled parties. Perhaps we will find an African-American candidate and we will make it a MATTER OF PRIDE for disenfranchised AA's to regain their right to vote, pointing out that it was the REPUBLICANS with DEMOCRATIC apathy that took their hard-won vote away.

Or, as an alternative, we could have a replay of the French or Russian Revolutions. I'm good with either approach.

IMHO none of those candidates I've just mentioned has sold us out, and all put their money and hearts where their mouths are. They are not "politicians" as much as they are intentionally trying to make the world a better place for all of us. Seems to me that Al Gore has more than made up for listening to the "consultants" for so long. I am proud to be fellow citizens with all three of these men. They stand apart from all the others, and all meet the popular "standard" for presidential.

Kennedy would never run after seeing his family members killed by his own government. and i dont blame him either.after hearing him speak recently though, i sure as hell wouldnt mind if he ran. he was amazing on Charlie Rose a few weeks back.

Thank you Brad blog! This is a great interview and sets the record straight. My question for Robert is: have you looked at the outstanding evidence about the Bushit orchestrated holiday 1st stop of the War On Terror known as 9/11? www.loosechange911.com dedicated to those who died on 9/11.

If we can get the likes of Mr. Robert Kennedy Jr., Mr. Al Gore, Mr. David Griffin, Mr. David Geffen (just kidding unless he brings musical entertainment) and Mr. Brad Friedman and friends (such as Mr. Greg Palast and Ms. Bev Harris) together for a 3 hour think tank, IMAGINE THE AMERICAN IDEALISM WHICH COULD SPRING FORTH. We might be able to take back our country while we still have a chance and SAVE the world from the current DESTRUCTIVE path made by the greedy criminal BUSHIT administration. i will guard the door.

Expose ALL AMERICANS to these 6 topics:
1. 9/11 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE INSIDE JOB
2. eliminating corp contributions to political parties
3. eliminating all electronic voting machines
4. Protecting our fragile atmosphere/environment in crisis (Global Warming)
5. Waving the White Flag in Iraq/Est a U.N. peacekeeping force
6. Establish a national court to immediately IMPEACH and JAIL all political office holders who have committed criminal acts at the State and Federal levels of government. Purge the system.

Like what? Other than Bobby, and people like Brad, and Black Box Voting, the politicos haven't been involved to any demonstrable degree. And Brad, and Bobby and BBV aren't Politicos. They are Democrats to be sure, but they aren't politicians. Only now is Howard Dean finally getting involved. I'm not sure when you or I say Dems that we mean the same thing. I mean Dem Leadership. Like Reed, Pelosi, or anyone in the party that might actually be able to get something done. The only one I could say has actually tried to do something is John Conyers. But he is in the minority party and even Nancy isn't paying attention to him.

I don't want to see Kennedy run for any office.
It felt like family when we lost his father, uncle & cousin & the world is still suffering from the loss.
He's doing plenty right now & has been with his environmental groups.

#52 Charlie
I'd like to join you up in that rainbow world you live in but I just can't.
Prove me wrong!
Meanwhile, I'll work on plan B, the Nat'l Initiative, in addition to plan A.

This was definitely the smart and tenacious handiwork of Joy and Tom. All I did was largely screw up the posting and confuse folks so they errantly thought it was mine! With my apologies! It's been that kind of week(s).

I've also fixed the link to Joy's website, and hope all the hiccups don't keep her from sharing more interviews with us! A little birdie told me she may already have another Exclusive interview alread "in the can" for ya! Stay tuned...While I otherwise get the hell outta here for a bit!

Actually, Kennedy did say he might run for at least some political office on one of the interviews he did after his Rolling Stone article. I would love to see him run for president because he would never accept a stolen election.

Great questions in the interview with Kennedy! That's the first time I've heard about the million dollars payed to blind people to testify for secret voting on paperless machines. Shame!

Why aren't Republicans standing up and speaking on this issue? Why isn't Republican leadership standing up and speaking on this issue?

OK. I am a 67 year old, having voted Republican for 35 years. Anyone, Republican or Democrat that cannot see the blatent elections theft of the Republican neocons needs to have his or her head examined. I hereby offer my apologies to the human race for voting for this idiot in 2000. With the possibility of having my November 2006 vote go to the Republicans in a "electronic switch" voting machine, I would be a fool to cast a vote. When will gutless Republican voters get off your ass and admit you have been had by a machine that wants nothing but to lead our country into a fasciasm? Give people the facts about the 2002 and 2004 elections, - and transparent voting practices and we will get our country back. Instead, you turn a blind eye to the facts because you don't want your neighbors and friends to know - you made a mistake like I did and voted for this SOB in the white house. Shame on You!! Call your grandkids now and confess to selling out their future!

Thank you so much for your sane, and humane words! I would beg you, though, please, to hold your nose and vote for Democrats in November, and encourage everyone you know to do the same. We are doing everything we can to stop everyone from having to vote on these rigged machines, but if we cannot, it is imperative that we make them steal our votes. We can't just sit back and let it happen. If people stay home, instead of voting, the fascists will get their way by default. We can show our patriotism and contempt for criminality by voting in unprecedented numbers. Thank you, and bless your heart.

Larry,
That's true, he did. *gulp* The only office that would befit him is President, actually. Though I would like to see him run with Gore and between the two of them they would tell the American people the TRUTH, about a LOT of things.

Dave,
I'm really glad to see you speak out. We need more people like you to speak truth to power. Thank you. We especially need our so-called "seniors" to speak out, those that realize what is going on and will tell fellow members of their generation that they've been essentially screwed by these current miscreants in power. What these "Republicans" are doing to medicare, to social security, to their grandchildren's future, is criminal. Everyone in America is going to suffer under their policy decisions.

I'm very glad you read my interview, Dave, and hope you will read the next one. And please spread it to your friends. Print it out, too.

oh and I must reiterate Agent99's message. You simply must vote in 2006, but if you don't want to use those machines, and I hardly blame you, then ask for an absentee ballot, and HAND deliver it to the office after you've filled it out.

That's the best way. That's what I'm doing.

And i'm gonna keep my ballot number and follow up a few days later after the vote and make sure my number is on file as having voted. If enough of us do this, and TELL the SoS we will via a phone call or email, then we will start taking it back.

That's the best way to make sure your vote is counted.

Please VOTE! WE need a LANDSLIDE to get subpeonas and the impeach this guy....

Richard, they were not factual, they were not truthful, and you were detracting from a great man's post. I don't want this to deteriorate into a flame war based on 4 year old sand box politics. But you are welcome to go to another thread to toss your sand.

Yes, there is growing evidence that our "democracy," the one we fought a revolutionary war over, and the one we are so proud of, is being highjacked. What has been disturbing to me has been the near-silence of the mass media press and of elected public officials at state level and in the US House and Senate.

I don't know whether this is the result of a corporate conspiracy or not. All I know is that the mass media, with some notable exceptions: Keith Olberman, Helen Thomas, Lou Dobbs, are not doing their jobs and they should be criticised. Our democracy will not survive without a free and open press.

The George Clooney movie "Good Night and Good Luck" hit this nail right on the head. I wonder what would have happened if Clooney had set the movie and plot in the post 9/11 era rather than the 1950s. Would the news corporations have blocked that?

It's true that if Kennedy ran for office he would never accept a stolen election, unlike the others in his party that already have & would.
That's what he meant by dying in your boots.
He knows only too well & first hand what it will take to change the system.
I feel his family has given enough--he is very useful like it is. Let someone else do it this time.
That's why I fear he'd never live through it for long.
It's not insane to think this way--just naive not to know it.
It's naive & takes some denial not to know it.
We've already lived through what happens to those that don't go along with the program.
The system if corrupt & not by boy scouts--did you hear about it yet? Helllooo?
The system needs to be changed.

These corporations were making hundreds of millions of dollars. The machines [...] were just a cheap piece of junk that cost less than $100 to manufacture, and they were selling them for $2400 apiece.

observation 2:

Corporations don't want democracy, they want free markets [see Bolivia, Brazil, Africa, etc], they want profits, and oftentimes the easiest path to profits is to use the campaign finance system to get their hooks into a public official and to use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them monopoly control and a competitive edge and to privatize the commons-to steal our air, our water, or our public treasury, and liquidate it for private profits.

conclusion:

Corporations are a great thing for our country.

I find this conclusion of his mystifying considering how penetrating he is with other issues.

That was NOT his "conclusion". Are you doing this on purpose? The proof of your misstatement heads this very thread. I think you should give it another read. Or, if you merely wanted to find fault. Mission accomplished. Not ALL corporations are good, and not all are bad. Sheesh. He didn't drop the ball on this subject, you did.

Agent99,
Let me make it absolutely clear to you that I do not want to start a fuzz or demean RFK's person or articles in any way. I greatly appreciate his articles in general and enjoy reading them. Because of that I go trough the trouble to give some constructive criticism. Please don't fall in the trap of mistaking anything other than blind adoration for trolling. Criticism is constructive, trolling disruptive.

My observation is part of a greater whole. If you read his article carefully you get the impression that corporations or otherwise rich and selfish entities are pulling us into this election quagmire, and I think he is right. These entities have at best a neutral view towards democracy but are more commonly its enemy. Democracy is after all for serving the common good and putting The People up front, whereas these entities are turned inward, only concerned with petty selfish interests. Recent events have shown the lengths trough which some of them are willing to go to persue them.

And in light of this, and because he explains this all so nicely, I find his blanket generalization that 'corporations are good' somewhat curious. It seems to me that uncontrolled and without oversight corporations will wreck havoc and lead us down the path of fascism.

In short, solving the short term security of elections isn't good enough, we must focus on the root of all problems. And start doing so by holding these entities accountable for their actions.

I directed the magical Googling fingers of ms in la, (author of Who's Counting) to your investigative thread (which I can't find now!) and she put her fingers to work!

She doesn't post here, but posted her results at CCN (Clark Community Network, our "home" blog).

I will scroll back up this thread and find the link to that thread to post it, but just wanted to give you a heads-up! It's very good stuff!! If we lived in any sort of "normal" times, you'd all be shocked, I tell you! Shocked!

Kevin has it right about Corporate America. It's neutral toward democracy.

In the last 25 years public corporations have distanced themselves from most regulation, from normal accounting standards, from antitrust oversight, and from labor unions. The historical balance between private interests and the public interest has vanished. This is a direct outgrowth of the Reagan Revolution, when government became not the answer to problems, but the problem itself.

That's why C.E.O. compensation is absurdly high. It's why Tom DeLay's K Street project came into being. It's why Cheney can get away with holding a private meeting with oil company executives disguised as an energy policy conference, lead the country into an invasion of a sovereign country that directly benefits his company, Halliburton, while growing his personal wealth to $100 million through Halliburton options.

Corporate America isn't opposed to democracy, but it doesn't care about it either. It cares about profits and a high stock price that enriches the people who get the options. It cares about being left alone to do its thing, and it will spend a fortune to elect people like Bush and Cheney (and Tom DeLay) who will help the top dogs get richer and richer.

Anything we can do to embarrass most of Corporate America (there are a handful of public-spirited companies who don't deserve it) is worth the effort. They like being left alone, but they're also image conscious. Crooked voting machines are an embarrassment to everyone except their manufacturers and dumb-ass election officials who defend them.

So, we now have states which leave us no legal recourse if we suspect that an election has been stolen.(The operative word being, "legal.) We have an opposition party who believes that admitting defeat gracefully is more important than standing up for Democracy and the voters.

How out of touch can politicians be? What are we, the people, going to have to do to shake them all to their respective cores?

My strong hunch is that whatever it is, won't be legal, but it will be necessary. The American Revolution wasn't legal, either.

We certainly appreciate your interest. I wish brad bloggers had the interest we used to ... like on the Lemme thread where everyone dug up good info.

In my opinion, and I think Floridiot's too, any information we dig up belongs to the public domain. So thanks for spreading the word.

There are many good threads on this blog.

Just note that we tend to require verification of all allegations, as you will note in my comments about your posts in the thread. Not criticism of you, just a reminder of our dedication to facts.

There are a lot of Shawn Southworth's in the US, but we are only interested in the one who the record indicates has certified each and every voting machine in the past decade.

We tie him to a company that is tied to the military industrial complex as its biggest customer, and that said company Shawn works for is paid by the election machine makers to certify their election machines.

We tie the company directly to lobbyists who are republican operatives, and who get this company no bid deals like Cheney did for Haliburton.

Note to readers: Stay away from the thread link below until you are off mother's milk (faith in government and corporations) and until you are ready for some reality that is tough and sad.

I'm very disappointed that you didn't ask RFK Jr why he's gnoring the stolen 2000 eleectio. The evidence of Bush's theft of the 2000 election in Florida is far more solid than the evidence of what happened in Ohio in 2004. Diebold machines were also used in Florida in 2000. It's Al Gore who belongs in the White House and NOT John Kerry.

Comment #90: I disagree with your statement that the 2000 election was more easy to proove that it was rigged. If you do a complete study of the 2004 election of the known stolen swing states of OH, FL, NM, and NV, there is/was more very outstanding evidence of election FRAUD (both electronic and humanistic)to support that 2004 was greater than in Fl in 2000. The type of swing state fraud of the 2000 election was repeated, however, the 2004 Presidential election fraud was carried out on a much bigger scale using different types of manipulations to arrive at the stolen Bush victory. New Mexico would have been the easiest to prove.

The Corporate owned U.S. MASS MEDIA run by the bullhorn of the U.S. government COMPLETELY supported the Bushit outcome as well as the robots in CONGRESS in accepting the rigged electoral votes with the exception of a few bulldogs.

Comment #90: One other point in regards to recounts. In 2000, the Supreme Court fix was in to stop the recount in Fl which immediately gave King George his 1st Presidential victory. The only stolen state to be recounted in 2004 was Ohio. David Cobb of the Green Party and the legal election protection attornies at the Ohio Free press went along with the paces documenting how Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell bent the law in this faux illegitimate recount which was not performed to OHIO law. Of course John Kerry and the Ohio Republidem party went along with the Bushit outcome.

The Robert Lockwood Mills sore loser theory presented at post #86 is very plausible if you want to exclude the idea that Bush gave his fellow SKULL AND BONESMAN the word to lay down in the ring and stay down or that he was a Washington General's (team which always LOSES to the Harlem Globetrotters) plant from the get go.

Right, Grizzly, that's a good way to explain the differences. The repubs did more of a frontal attack in 2000 and it was blatantly obvious.

2004 was much more a sneak attack, even though I was aware of what was going on, the media just ignored the problems of Ohio. And I think they did slightly different things with the machines.

2000 was about manipulations by the Bush administration of the judicial process, as well as all this about hanging chads, etc. We can really blame Bush's victory on FOX news, because I believe a cousin of Bush at FOX news declared it for Bush even though Gore was CLEARLY winning, and then the obedient lap-dog media all parroted FOX just like mindless automotons.
So the media, was complicit and then complicit again in 2004. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Environmental Attorney Robert Kennedy Jr. with the NRDC would be interested to learn from an article on raw story today titled: Earth faces catastrophic loss of species.

19 of the world's most eminent biodiversity specialists claim that we are losing species because of HUMAN ACTIVITY 100 to 1000 times greater than the normal "backround " extinction rate in the 3.5 billion year history of life on this planet.

It goes onto say that this 6th wave of world extinctions unlike the previous began with man migrating from Africa 100,000 years ago followed by the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, finally worsening in the industrial revolution in the 1800's.

We need U.S. leaders who will address our environment in crisis as opposed to a government who attacks it's own people www.loosechange911.com and then uses this attack as an excuse to wage war against a third world country for their oil.

Civilian casualties + US military casualties + world species in crisis = Bushit administration (oil barron criminal losers in power who corrupted our election system to gain their authority to DESTROY the U.S. and the world.

John Conyers Jr. of Michigan wrote 106 page report which covered some of the fraud which happened in the Ohio Presidential election in 2004.

He shared this report with the robots in Congress however, this was a non-issue for the majority (corporate sellout Congressmen) who laughed at Senator Barbara Boxer and a handful of US Representatives for not accepting the RIGGED ELECTORAL VOTES. Other neo-con/Republidem robots ridiculed the few who showed a shred of integrity for representing the will of US citizens and voters. This was holding up the Bushman BAstard Alberto Gonzalez Attorney General appointment hearings which Congressional Republicans scheduled that same day January 6, 2005.

John Conyers Jr. is on a very short list of Congressmen who i respect. As many of you may know, he helped get rid of Nixon who in retrospect compared to G.W. Bush is like a derelict boy scout. Bush is much more threatening to all living species and our trashed constitutional form of government in crisis acting as ignoramous leader responsible for running the greedy neo-con oil barge right into the last disappearing glacier.

He belives his own bushit and no one - NO ONE has stopped him. His loser perception is reality USA 7/20/2006. New Orleans is not part of Iraq but you wouldn't know because it's in the wake of the Bushit barnicle barge.

The Bushit administration take on the environment: 1st make yourself aware of the over 200 environmental laws they have reversed. Then take into account their stance on Global Warming that is basically one of denial in the face of undisputed scientific proof.

The U.S. is the #1 abuser of harm against our fragile atmosphere producing the most carbon dioxide of any nation. Again the stance of these oil barron elitist losers is to promote an energy policy which destroys our world at the expense of life as we know it. By promoting their oil war of aggression, they are in effect burning the candle at both ends they have Dubya'd WWIII.

Thanks for providing the worst US leadership in our history. You greedy DESTRUCTIVE lying rusters MUST BE IMPEACHED AND JAILED for the United States to ever become a world respected leader again.

Fancy - you did a great job. To interview Representative John Conyers Jr. at Bradblog would be the cat's meow. Don't mind my angry rants to expose the truth of the Bushit administration. 20 years from now i got to feel like i did my best as a voice for ALL species now headed for a human caused demise because of the actions of these Fascist criminal thugs who have hijacked our nation.

Each county in California uses the voting machine that it has chosen from those available on the market. While I applaud Kennedy for his concern and dedication, the information on voting machines in California is not accurate. See:http://www.calvoter.org/issues/votingtech/index.html
My feeling is that we do need a paper reciept, but having a ballot stub has never prevented fraud historically. I'm sure we are all aware that it is possible to count the votes correctly. After all, if COSTCO can operate 20 computer cash registers, all day every day, we can count votes. Obviously COSTCO would not be using electronic "counting" if it weren't accurate. It's always about the bottom line.

I tried to read your blog but the damn "Zap the Mosquito" banner at the top that was making the buzzing noise was very distracting. I had to smash my speakers; luckily, I had a back up pair and finished your blog. It was more serious than I am used to but very informative.

The problem is not so much THAT machines are counting, it is the way these machines count, and can be made so easily to count any old way one person or one party wants them to. COSTCO's machines, I'm sure, are made such that they are impervious to nefarious means to hack into their tabulation. THAT IS NOT THE CASE WITH THE VOTING MACHINES. YOUR VOTE CAN BE STOLEN BY ANY NUMBER OF PEOPLE, AND YOUR VOTE VERY WELL MAY HAVE BEEN STOLEN A NUMBER OF TIMES ALREADY, DEPENDING ON WHERE YOU LIVE.

Please take the time to look into this more carefully. Our country is at stake.

ALTHOUGH I DON'T POST ANYWHERE VERY OFTEN, ONCE IN AWHILE I FEEL THE NEED TO DO SO. I AM NEITHER A DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN, CONSERVATIVE OR LIBERAL. I GIVE NEITHER TIME NOR MONEY TO EITHER PARTY. I AM AS NEUTRAL AS AN AMERICAN CAN BE THESE DAYS. WHAT I DO IS I READ EVERYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING THAT I CAN GET MY HANDS ON. THE PUBLIC LIBRARY IS THE GREATEST TOOL GIVEN TO ANY AMERICAN. MAYBE A FEW OF YOU SHOULD FIND YOUR LOCAL BRANCH AND GIVE IT A TRY. AFTER READING THIS, IT IS OBVIOUS THAT MORE THAN A FEW OF YOU HAVE PROBABLY NEVER BEEN INSIDE ONE.

1)FIND A DICTIONARY AND LOOK UP "FASCISM"--ALL OF YOU WHO USE THIS WORD REALLY NEED TO KNOW WHAT IT MEANS.

2)A KENNEDY SPEAKING OUT ABOUT THE ELECTION FRAUD THAT HIS GRANDFATHER INVENTED?

3)IF THE REPUBLICANS ARE SO GOOD AT THIS FRAUD AND THE MEDIA IS SO UNWILLING TO REPORT IT, WHY ARE THE TWO SIDES STILL ALMOST EQUALLY REPRESENTED IN BOTH HOUSES? WHY HAVEN'T "THEY" DEFRAUDED THEIR WAY TO BIGGER MAJORITIES?

4)IN THESE DAYS OF "SCANDAL-A-DAY" STYLE REPORTING ON THE BUSH ADMIN, DO YOU REALLY THINK THEY WOULD PASS THIS ONE UP IF IT WAS A VIABLE STORY? WHAT'S THE BENEFIT TO THEM?

5)WE ALL KNOW WE INVADED IRAQ FOR OIL, BUT WE ALL LIKE OUR CARS, SO ENOUGH ALREADY.

6)SCIENTIFIC THEORY IS NOT THEM SAME AS SCIENTIFIC FACT(GLOBAL WARMING CAUSES).

8)NO ONE ON EARTH COULD,OR SHOULD, EVER DEFEND WHAT CYNTHIA MCKINNEY DOES OR SAYS. ASIDE FROM BEING AN IGNORANT, RACE-BAITING, EMPTY SUIT OF A POLITICIAN, SHE PIONEERED VOTER FRAUD IN GEORGIA. THE REASON NO ONE IN GEORGIA DEFENDS HER IS BECAUSE SHE IS AN EMBARASSMENT TO ALL OF US GEORGIANS. ASIDE FROM SOMEONE RUNNING HER OVER WITH AN TRUCK, PEOPLE DOWN HERE, EVEN HER OWN CONSTITUENTS, WOULD CONDONE ANY MEANS NECESSARY TO REMOVE HER FROM OFFICE.

ALOT OF YOU SEEM TO BE DUMPING ON WEAK-KNEED DEMOCRATS AS MUCH AS YOU DUMP ON THE REPUBLICANS. BUT MY QUESTION IS; GIVEN A CHOICE, WHO WOULD YOU VOTE FOR? EXACTLY. YOU WOULD TAKE YOUR LIKE-MINDED CANDIDATE(DEM) EVEN IF HE/SHE DIDN'T SPEAK TO YOUR EXACT NEEDS/WANTS. THE U.S. POLITICAL "ANIMAL" CANNOT BE CHANGED UNTIL THERE IS A VIABLE THIRD OPTION (NOT JUST SOME NEO-HIPPIE MULTIMILLIONAIRE). MAY I SUGGEST YOU ALL READ TOM FRIEDMAN, NOAM CHOMSKY, HISTORY, GLOBALIZATION, ANYTHING, ANYTHING, ANYTHING. YOU CANNOT CREDIBLY REFUTE A POLITICAL CHOICE OR AN ARGUMENT UNLESS YOU KNOW THE FACTS.

Before you come in here shouting out your diatribe, perhaps you should look around a bit. I think you will find answers to all your questions and rebuttals to all your remarks. And by the way we do in fact know the Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism

For Chico: I read the New York Times every day, from cover to cover. It's regarded as a left-of-center publication, not friendly to Bush. I can assure you that you are totally incorrect about "scandal-a-day" reporting in the mainstream media. The Times has virtually ignored election fraud, never mentions Halliubrton's no-bid contracts or Cheney's fabulous wealth that derived from them, has never devoted an inch of space to skepticism about 9/11, has never published a word about Jeff Gannon, has totally ignored the Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney issue and the Ray Lemme case, and most recently covered the G-8 meeting without commenting on Bush's obnoxious behavior.

You ask why the media would ignore election fraud if it were a legitimate issue. Here's why: Every major newspaper and TV network in this country is owned by a corporation. Corporations have stockholders who don't like it when the stock goes down, which would surely happen if the public knew Bush was a fraudulent president; if these stocks went down a lot, the people who run them would lose their jobs...very high-paying jobs indeed. And all media except PBS depend on advertising revenue to exist; advertisers don't like to use media who publish "un-American" stuff like phony election outcomes. That's OK for the Ukraine, but not OK for the United States.

Get it now? And while you're in the library, boning up on your history, you might learn that RFK, Jr.'s grandfather did not invent election fraud in the United States. The elections of 1824, 1876, and 1888 were stolen from the Democrat (Jackson, Tilden, Cleveland) through one underhanded means or another. The elections of 1880 and 1884 were also marked with fraud (on both sides) that might well have determined the outcome.

In the future, Chico, I'd suggest you not lecture people who might know more about a subject than you do.

Chico,
The unmitigated arrogance of your post is truly amazing. Since you would undoubtedly dismiss as pure fabrication any current reading list from the various contributors to this blog, I won't bother to produce the titles of the books on politics, science, economics and world affairs that I have read in the past two months, (hmmm, at last count was it 14 or 15?). However I will tell you that as much as I esteem public libraries, I also esteem authors, and I BUY all of my books in order to support them. Now, as to your points:

1. "Fascism and Corporatism

"Fascism is an extreme right-wing ideology which embraces nationalism as the transcendent value of society. The rise of Fascism relies upon the manipulation of populist sentiment in times of national crisis. Based on fundamentalist revolutionary ideas, Fascism defines itself through intense xenophobia, militarism, and supremacist ideals. Although secular in nature, Fascism's emphasis on mythic beliefs such as divine mandates, racial imperatives, and violent struggle places highly concentrated power in the hands of a self-selected elite from whom all authority flows to lesser elites, such as law enforcement, intellectuals, and the media."

Mussolini's diary

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

2. Is it your contention that "the sins of the fathers should be visited upon their children even unto the third and fourth generation"? (Exodus 34: 6-7) If so, do you know what your own ancestors were doing?

3. The current generation of voting machines hadn't yet been in general use, and certainly hadn't been mandated by HAVA.

4. The corporatism in America encompasses mainstream media. When six major corporations control almost all television and radio stations as well as most newspapers, it is against their vested interests to call attention to any news which could jeopardize said control and their ability to influence (and yes, control) the minds, buying patterns, and voting patterns of Americans. They would rather distract their viewers with drivel about the latest celebrity scandal, or devote one more show to some upper middle class white girl who has gone missing.

5. Some of us, myself included, are driving hybrid vehicles, replacing incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, turning off any and all electricity hogs in our homes, including turning computer and stereo equipment off at the surge protectors when they are not in use. This is not to save money, it's to reduce our carbon footprints. Regardless of oil, we invaded Iraq based upon false pretenses. Lies told to the two houses of congress and the American people to justify an invasion that the administration had been planning since the moment it took office, and actually, long before that.

6. Is it safe to assume that you are rejecting the facts of global warming, and are instead listening to the two or three scientists whose allegiance is to the extraction industries who pay them rather than to the consensus arrived at by the scientific method employed by the rest of the world's scientific community?

7. Although it is unfortunately true that far too many politicians are venal, there are a few who still hold the common interest dear, and refuse to lower their standards.

8. Regardless of your feelings about Cynthia McKinney, vote flipping is to be deplored. It was also happening to some Republican incumbents in Iowa. The machines are, quite simply, a threat to honest elections.

My husband's firm was responsible for the campaign to introduce voters to the Hart machines in Orange County, CA. I happen to know quite a bit about voting machines. I suggest to you that whenever someone makes broad statements about voting machines that they haven't done their homework. Not all machines, nor their security, are in question. What is truly at stake in this debate is accuracy. If we want election reform we must limit ourselves to the facts. I find it irresponsible that this interview is being passed around with statements that are untrue. We get enough of that from the Current Administration.
I agree with President Carter, we need a National Election Committee. The Carter-Baker proposal for comprehensive voting reform is being ignored by Congress (so surprise there!)

If there are reliable, bet your life on them, voting machines extant, they most certainly are not in anything approximating a wide enough distribution. The lion's share of the voting machines sold across the country are COMPLETELY insecure, and are being manipulated by malign influences of the worst sort. THESE ARE THE FACTS.

I live in California, and just got a letter from the registrar's office a couple months ago that told me all of California's votes were being taken and counted by Diebold machines. I do not know if this is a fact, but my county's registrar saw fit to announce it. Diebold machines have been shown repeatedly to be easily hacked, and to have been easily hacked.

It's a blood-curdling emergency that the ability to flip votes without a trace be stopped BEFORE we vote again. It will be a miracle if we can pull it off. I don't care what business your husband is in, or how good his machines are. Election fraud is real... and on a massive scale now. Someone is in the White House who never was elected President... not ever.... Switching to hand marked and hand counted paper ballots is a fast substitute for the machines that are flushing our democracy down the toilet. Your husband can get another job, or he can show that his machines are better at a later date. RIGHT NOW, DO YOU WANT YOUR COUNTRY, OR DO YOU WANT THESE FASCIST CRIMINALS TO KEEP INVADING COUNTRIES, TORTURING PEOPLE AND IGNORING THE CONSTITUTION?

For me, the part that stands out is the discussion about the difference between Republican voters and Democrat voters often coming down to knowledge and framing.

I know that many allegedly moderate dems think that the important thing is for Dems not to be "extreme", not to be "shrill", not to bring up forbidden topics and so on.

They act as though they can't see the crazy double standard by which they live, by which they would have us all live.

In this double standard world, Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly remain media darlings, while Dan Rather is vilified and driven from the media.
Bill Buckley is a Grand Old Man, while Noam Chomsky is a fire-breathing nutcase. Obrador is a "leftist", while Calderone is a "conservative". Israel is always right and the Palestinians are always wrong. Whitewater was important national business, but Dems must swear an oath prior to the November elections that they will not investigate any allegations re. the Bush administration, should they take Congress.

Above all, any talk about Stolen Elections is forbidden.

It will be interesting to see HOW FAST THAT RULE CHANGES if the Dems do actually take Congress in November.

The problem is the media, and the answer isn't trying to kowtow to the media, trying to borrow Republican spots as much as possible. The answer is nurturing alternative media (like Bradblog).

What most Americans believe isn't that different. What facts actually reach them is what makes the difference, at least according to the interivew above (and I think it's true).

Comment #118: The Carter-Baker reform was like a dog and pony show for election reform. It DID NOT address the main problems facing our election system crisis such as HACKED/HACKABLE VOTING MACHINES RUN BY CONVICTED FELONS. It did not address the massive humanistic fraud documented in the Conyer's report of 2004 Presidential Election in OHIO. Someone misrepresenting himself as Bart Simpson and casting an illegal vote with this ficticious name does not explain what is/has happened to the US ELECTION SYSTEM in place or provide a cure in any way.

Chico - watch out for that carbon dioxide reducing / oxygen producing tree (branch) when you go walking in the forest so it doesn't hit you in the face. U prove that just because a person can read that they still can remain clueless. Thank you R.L.M. and co. for TRYING to point this dude in the right direction.

Given our current political and democratic crisis I?d like to hone in on some vitally important ideas Mr. Kennedy shared when asked his thoughts on what should be done. What has become clear to me, and this interview reinforces my opinion, is that real change will not be possible until we fix our campaign finance system. I would even take this idea a step further and say that we may find it necessary replace nearly all of the politicians with a new generation of elected officials not tainted by the current corporate funded electoral process.

I think it admirable that so many still hold high hopes that the Democratic Party will somehow ?wake up? but the reality is they are as corporate polluted as the Republican Party. The current crisis quagmire is all the evidence we need to see that this is so. Both parties essentially want the same things as each are beholden and in service to the same multinational corporations. The only distinguishing factor that separates them is their methodologies.

Excerpts from interview:

RFK JR.: Well the first thing we need to do is to restore American Democracy.

Number One: Fix the campaign finance system to get corporate money out of the electoral process. Corporations are a great thing for our country. They drive our economy but they should NOT be running our government because they don't want the same thing for America that Americans want. Corporations don't want democracy, they want free markets, they want profits, and oftentimes the easiest path to profits is to use the campaign finance system to get their hooks into a public official and to use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them monopoly control and a competitive edge and to privatize the commons-to steal our air, our water, or our public treasury, and liquidate it for private profits.

Number Two: We have to fix the press: restore journalistic ethics in this country, and that is by bringing back the fairness doctrine and strengthening the FCC. The Fairness Doctrine was abolished by Ronald Reagan in 1988, and it recognized that the airwaves belong to the public; that the broadcasters can be licensed to use them to make a profit, but they use them with the proviso that their primary obligation is to advance democracy and promote the public interest. They have to inform the public because a democracy cannot survive an uninformed public. As Thomas Jefferson said, "An uninformed public will trade a hundred years of hard-fought civil rights for a half an hour of welfare." And they will follow the first demagogue or religious fanatic that comes along and offers them a $300 tax break.

Number Three: We have to fix our electoral system so that every vote is counted. Those are the first three things that any President should do, Republican or Democrat, to restore American Democracy.

To focus our efforts primarily on these three steps would be putting the horse before the cart. Thinking through how our political process works and more specifically how the legislative process works we can see how the roots of so many of our problems originate from here. If legislation is submitted in the House of Representative?s for example that is not favorable to some dominate entity of corporate America that has been donating campaign dollars to a fair number of those very same representatives voting on the fate of that legislation the likely hood of that bill passing are next to nil. Even if it does pass, in time the corporate entities will chip away via their lobbyist until they finally water down or replace it entirely with counter legislation. The demise of the Fairness Doctrine, as Kennedy discusses, is a perfect illustration.

To be successful in restoring American Democracy, we will need a complete ?flip? in power interest and in what drives that interest in Washington. Rehabilitation of politicians addicted to corporate funding as with any type of addiction is possible but politicians will seek treatment only if they truly feel at risk and see that the status quo is really about to change.

There are numerous political activist organizations that currently are scattered and focusing on a wide variety of problems. I am concerned about such fragmentation as I suspect it is diluting our collective political forces both financially and in supporters which is rendering us largely ineffective. As an individual even if interested in their causes I cannot support all of them, either mentally, physically or financially. If we were to consolidate and funnel the resources available through all of these various political organizations into this main effort of campaign reform our force would be revolutionary in scope and impact. Swift change could truly be possible.

Ok, Agent 99---I think the most telling part of your response is your use of, "I don't care" so often.

When you stop caring about truthful information, when you dismiss what someone else has to say without doing your homework then you are no better than the those you oppose. You are sucking in propaganda instead of facts.

Elections have been stolen for hundreds of years. Whenever evil people lurk there will be corruption. Most Republicans vote by Absentee ballot, have been doing it for years. They spend more money on that then anything else. Why? Because they find it easy to elect Republicans to Country Registrar positions.That is where all the hand written ballots are counted. Opportunity for fraud? Check it out!!!

My only point in jumping into this discussion is to present some facts:

Californians vote on the machines that are purchased county by county. Look at the list. Many use Diebold, many do not.

Name me a computer that is not hackable! That is not our biggest problem. The counting of paper ballots, paper receipts,etc. are of interest but not as much as changing the system to remove partisanship.

I'm amazed that RFK Jr. did not know the facts. Really amazed. Not so with you, I guess.

My husband, who you don't care about, has spent 40 years working in Democratic politics. If he had not been on the streets in Chicago, reporting for his newspaper, people in our area wouldn't have known what really happened in Chicago.
Just what are your credentials??????????????

Gizzly Bear Dancer-
Dog and Pony Show, huh. President Carter travels all over the world to observe elections. I guess that means you know more about the process than he does, huh?
How do propose making the changes? What have you done to make your sure your local election board is effective and clean? Do YOU participate or just yada-yada?????
The only chance for a change is grassroots activism. A bit different from blogging...

Chancy... I seem incapable of making a strong point to someone without them coming back at me with more. I don't care if your husband is a Democrat. I don't care if his business makes it. I want him and you to eat, and have comfortable, safe lives, but not at the expense of our democracy. He can get another job. There are already hundreds of thousands of dead people who do not get another life because of election fraud, and the granddaddy of all ways to defraud the People is by use of machines. I do not care what point you try to make about them NOW, it's imperative that they be taken off the table until they are made reliable, as invincibly reliable as humanly possible. Do you follow the actual intent behind my use of that phrase, or are you going to keep twisting for your husband's machines? Don't answer. I don't want to know, and will find out in any case.

Despite Chancy's assertions to the contrary, Bobby Kennedy has shown very clearly that he knows the facts: Rolling Stone article, numerous appearances on tv, his weekly radio show, Ring of Fire on Air America, most of which are linked on this blog. The voting machine companies love to troll this site and plant these soporific little seeds of doubt so it will be easier for us to take the lazy option and do nothing.

NO, REALLY! This world is how it is right now because too many people are unwilling to risk their paychecks, let alone life and limb, for our democracy. The idea of someone, of any party, who won't look past their own bread and butter, AND who will impugn the worth of the work of someone who is risking ALL of these, for ALL of our sakes, really makes me angry.

99 and Chancy got scrapping over the voting machine issue, and that happens now and then, even with people on the same side of an issue.

Personally, I think 99 and Chancy may be on the same side of a lot of issues. But I believe they are both a bit ignorant about certain things. But that's not a crime, and in fact it's inevitable given the number of issues we have to deal with, and the complexity of many of them. Everybody is ignorant about lots and lots of things...

I've already made a comment directed to Chancy about the Carter/Baker fraud, and I may have been a bit harsh in that one. If so, I apologize. It looks like Jimmy Carter's name was tied into this fraudulent "commission" without his knowledge or consent, in a transparent effort to "borrow" some credibility. Regular BRAD BLOG readers all know quite a bit about this and sometimes we forget that newcomers don't have the same background we have. But anyway ... please don't confuse Jimmy Carter's track record with the bogus commission that uses his name.

And now back to the machines ...

It may well be that Chancy knows things that 99 does not. There's a lot going on in the voting-machine industry and some of it is happening way under the radar.

For example...

I have a friend who has been writing elections software for several years. The guy's a flat-out genius, he's blown me away ever since the day I met him, and that was a long time before voting machines ever became an issue.

I won't mention his name or the name of the company he works for. But I will say that the machines they make can do everything anybody has ever asked for: they offer a fully auditable paper trail, several different ways for handicapped voters to vote, and security features you wouldn't believe. They have security features to protect against a thousand things I never would have thought of. He has described his software as "1% counting, 9% user-interface, and 90% security."

It's just about perfect...

... except that they can't sell them. I mean they really can't sell them. My friend hasn't seen a paycheck in more than two years!

Why? It's only speculation at this point, because nobody ever says why. They only say no.

But the main point is this: we could all be voting on machines that record our votes accurately and securely, but for many reasons most of us are not.

Given this state of affairs, it's understandable --- inevitable --- that there are some people in the electoral integrity movement who feel that we'd be all right voting on machines if we only had the right machines. And it's equally understandable --- equally inevitable --- that there are others who feel that we will never be all right voting on machines because we simply can't trust the machines.

In my opinion, it's not the machines that we can't trust. We can't trust some of the people. And anything that makes it easier for people to manipulate an election makes it more certain that elections will be manipulated. And that's one of the reasons why so many of them buy from Diebold, rather than from the company my friend works for.

Two unpleasant facts come to the fore here: Diebold machines are designed to be as insecure as possible. And they are the best-selling voting machines in the land. What does that tell you?

I didn't mean for this to turn into such a long comment, but them's the breaks. Some day maybe I'll write a short one.

O Frozen Friend, I will come right out and admit that I am ignorant of much, of very much, and also succumb to the lure of shorthand thinking and other forms of laziness of mind. I am not as vigilant as some to go after links to back up my assertions.

Here's a link to something that illustrates what's at stake, and why I'm so adamant to GET ELECTION INTEGRITY IN PLACE BY NOVEMBER. People are DYING behind this. No time for Chancy to be extolling the virtues of the voting machines that are causing this carnage.

(Scroll down for the pictures, the illustrations of my point, on my link if you can bear the pain.... It is SHOCKING, beware.)

The only chance for a change is grassroots activism. A bit different from blogging…

Chancy, you will find many here who feel that blogging and grassroots activism are complementary activites, and who do a lot of both. Blogs such as this one give us a means to keep in touch, and often that means a place to vent our frustrations. But listen, Chancy: if you think that venting our frustrations is the only thing we do, then you are short-changing this blog in particular if not all blogs in general.

Charlie L. said it well the other day:

This battle will NOT be won in blogs — it will only be MOBILIZED and EDUCATED by them.

99 re #131: That's a great --- though horrific --- link! and we are very fortunate to have people such as Michel Chossudovsky on the net ... but I still don't think it's fair to blame the carnage on the voting machines. IMHO every crime in this whole sorry saga has been committed by people.

Well, I do agree with YHO, dear Winter. It is the people selling and buying and taking benefit of the hackability of machines who are doing these things, and letting them be done, and saying that the decimation of Southern Lebanon shouldn't be stopped because the problem won't be solved if it's stopped, and in Iraq that we will stand down when they stand up, as we're flattening them for drill.... Stuff like that there, but, if I've snarked Chancy's head off unfairly, at least she knows I still wish for her comfort and safety, even in her "amazement" about Bobby's grasp of the facts, and her idea that one must present credentials to be presumed sentient enough to weigh in on the subject.

Secure voting machines, obviously, are for a future we cannot reach without destroying the utterly insecure ones first. Not only is Bobby's grasp of the facts darn excellent, but he's doing something about it.